Glenn VAN DE VEN
MPIA – Heidelberg
The Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area (CALIFA) survey is the first ongoing integral-field spectroscopic survey of a diameter-selected (45″ < D_25 < 80″) sample of up to 600 galaxies in the local universe (0.005 < z < 0.03) of *all Hubble types*. The employed PMAS/PPAK-IFU field-of-view of 65″ x 72″ covers the full optical extent of the selected galaxies. The medium-resolution V1200 grating used yields high-quality maps of stellar and ionized gas kinematics. The combination with the low-resolution V500 grating provides coverage from 3700 to 7000 Angstrom, which allows for mapping of stellar ages, metallicities and full star formation histories as well as ionized-gas emission line fluxes and chemical abundances. These detailed maps provide crucial bench-marks for galaxy formation models and high-redshift observations. In addition, they enable us to directly probe open questions in galaxy evolution, including the following that are tackled in the presentation: (i) Are LINER galaxies powered by a low-luminosity active galactic nucleus?; (ii) Are lenticular galaxies faded spiral galaxies?; (iii) Are low-mass (spiral) galaxies dark-matter dominated?